What is a Stutter Trigger?

Good evening everyone,

I hope you’re all keeping well 🙂

Have you ever wondered what causes people to stutter? In today’s blog, we’re going to delve into the concept of “Stuttering Triggers”, what they are, how they can impact a stutterer’s fluency and the steps that we can take to both understand and overcome them in our lives.

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

I’ve had a stutter for as long as I can possibly remember, and it’s safe to say that it has played an enormous role in my life. A couple of years ago, I made myself a promise that I would do whatever I could to raise awareness of the condition, which is a lot of what we have done here on Sweeney’s Blogs over the last five years or so.

For a lot of people, they typically don’t know where to start when it comes to breaking down the true impact of a stutter. I’m going to start breaking down some of the terms that I use to better understand my speech, starting with stutter triggers for you all.

For people who stutter, a trigger is an event, situation, or circumstance that can increase the likelihood or severity of stuttering. Triggers can be internal (for example when you are under intense emotions, stressed or highly tired) or external (for instance when you have to speak on the phone, in front of people, or even something as trivial as ordering at a drive-through).

Not all individuals who stutter experience the same triggers, as they are a very unique and personal, which can vary in intensity and impact from person to person. For some people, a trigger may cause the occasional disruption in otherwise fluent speech, for others, it may completely throw them off course.

While it can be very tricky at first, taking the time to properly identify, understand and start to take the steps needed to overcome your personal triggers is so vitally important. Whether that is implementing another stuttering technique to manage your flow in these instances or finding a way to move past them entirely, they can make an enormous difference to how you manage your talking.

For me, I used to be terrified of speaking on the phone. It was something that I was really anxious about, mainly because I relied quite heavily on reading and reacting to body language when managing my speech. When I first started working in PR and had to make a load of phone calls, I never thought that I would be able to do it.

Although I’ll leave the full story of how I moved past this fear to another day, I am so glad that I dedicated the time and effort needed to get to this stage. It was an incredibly difficult journey, and if I’m honest, is something that still puts me on edge occasionally, however, I have learnt that that is completely okay.

Would I still class speaking on the phone a stuttering trigger for me? Yes, in this case, I would, although I am nowhere near as scared about it all as I used to be. After taking the time to identify, understand and plan out how to address this trigger, I feel so much more confident in myself and my ability to communicate clearly across different environments, whether that’s in person or on the phone.

While stuttering triggers can vary from person to person, together we can raise awareness of them. We can continue to shine a light on much-needed conversations, starting those needed conversations and helping others out wherever we can 🙂

That’s all for today’s blog, what do you think? Have you heard about stuttering triggers before? What’s one lesson that you’ve found really interesting to learn over the last couple of years?

I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely day!